Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations

As government has gotten so much bigger than the civic virtue available to manage it in the public interest, regulatory agencies have been captured by the special interests they are supposed to regulate. This refusal to regulate in the public interest may have originated in Connecticut, where the premise of regulatory law long has been that the special interest being regulated should supply two-thirds or at least a majority of the members of regulatory agencies. So doctors control the medical examining board, lawyers control the lawyer disciplinary board, dentists control the dental commission, and so on, right down to the board that regulates barbers and hairdressers. (Yes, even they have a regulatory board.)

So it is almost miraculous that somehow the power to license teachers in Connecticut has remained with the state Education Department, as the teacher unions constitute a special interest more influential politically than all the other professional groups combined. This anomaly has been noticed by Connecticut's biggest teacher union, the Connecticut Education Association, which is asking the General Assembly to transfer the teacher licensing power from the Education Department to a committee composed entirely of teachers, presumably union members.

"You'll find teachers are harder on other teachers than anyone else will ever be because they know the job," the CEA's executive director, Mary Loftus Levine, says.

CEA President Phil Apruzzese adds, "We hear regularly from our members that they want a voice in decision making through a new board because they know what it takes to deliver excellent teaching and learning and they want to be accountable for excellence."

Of course all Connecticut's experience with professional regulation, with teachers and others, is exactly to the contrary.

Where is the case of the incompetent teacher whose union, instead of defending him, campaigned with school administrators to get rid of him? And does the CEA really solicit members by promising to be harder on them than anyone else would ever be?

As for teachers wanting to be accountable, some years ago when it was discovered that Connecticut's Freedom of Information Act required that teacher evaluations be public documents and be made available to parents, the teacher unions, horrified, needed only a few days to persuade the General Assembly and the governor to enact an exemption for teachers. Today in Connecticut anyone can inspect the evaluation of a police officer, a firefighter, a sanitation worker, a road crew member, or any other public employee, but not the evaluation of a teacher.

If they ever really were committed to accountability, teacher unions would demand repeal of their members' arrogant exemption from the FOI law.

Connecticut's experience fits instead with George Bernard Shaw's famous remark that "every profession is a conspiracy against the laity." Shaw added, "Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away." It's no different with teachers.

The state Education Department may be a bureaucracy but at least it knows that it's supposed to be a public agency serving the public, not a public employee union serving its members. That's why responsibility for teacher licensing should be left where it is.